Explorers - Barrington

Television – 2004

On 1 March 1864, Alpheus Barrington set out into the South Island wilderness in search of gold. He was joined by Welshman James Farrell and Frenchman Antoine Simonin; the three explorers travelled for seven months, fighting terrible conditions, starvation and frostbite. After the trio found their way home and narrowly escaped death (being described as "living skeletons covered in skin"), the public learnt that the only morsels of gold found were ditched in a last attempt to survive. Explorers - Barrington was the third of a four-part series in which host Peter Elliott retraces the steps of early New Zealand settlers/explorers.

What unknown affinity lies between mountain and sea in country crumpled like an unmade bed whose crumbs may be nuggets as big as your head and it’s all snow sheeted but storm cloud fed? Far behind is the blue Pacific and Tasman somewhere ahead. Wet or dry, low or high, somewhere — in the blanket fold of the land — lies the golden strand.
– Presenter Peter Elliot reads a passage from Denis Glover poem Arawata Bill